The United Kingdom Independence Party (usually shortened to UKIP or Ukip, commonly pronounced "YOU-kip"; the members may be kippers) is one of the UK's political parties. UKIP is actually a backronym, as the party is actually named for the stultifying dullness of its promotional output. They were formerly led, (though in the latter months, somewhat unwillingly) by Nigel Farage, after Putin apologist Diane James won a leadership election and then refused to take the post[1][2]; she has been described by UKIP's Welsh leader Neil Hamilton as Josef Stalin without a moustache just two hours after being elected leader.[3] Its current leader is Paul "Bab Bootle Meff" Nuttall.

Dave Cameron described UKIP in 2006 as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly."[4]Margaret Thatcher met with the then-leader of the party to give them tips, apparently finding the Conservative Party too pro-European in her later years.[5]

It has got to the point where even the most anglophile politicians have decided they don't want any of that shit in their union. One of the big reasons for including the UK in the first place was its tradition of tolerance and political stability, and that's all out the window now.[6]

On 9 October 2014, UKIP won its first seat in Westminster, as Douglas Carswell, who had defected from the Tories and resigned as an MP, retained his seat in a byelection.[7] They have also won a number of seats in the European Parliament in previous elections, but they hardly ever show up, let alone vote.[8] So that was useful, then. It will be interesting to see if this tendency will persist after the increase in their seats after the 2014 elections (see below). UKIP also has a number of councillors, winning a handful for the first time in 2013.

As their name implies, they want Britain to leave the European Union, and they were originally a single-issue party dedicated to that goal (although how the transition would be effected was not a point of discussion). A significant cross section of the British population is antipathetic towards the EU, and a competent party will one day convert that fuel into electoral success, but UKIP has to date avoided this trap by being careful not to convey any appearance of moderation or sensibility. They do manage to steal some votes from the Conservative Party (who are too "mainstream" and pro-free market) and the BNP (who are a bit too overtly racist).

Their hardcore stances toward immigration (legal or otherwise), climate skepticism, a flat tax, and social conservatism essentially made them the British Tea Party, operating as a separate party to drag the Tories further right. Following Britain's vote to leave the European Union, many UKIPers (some of whom are former Conservative MPs) have defected to Theresa May's side, now that the Tories have switched off Cameron's dream of a socially-liberal party.[9][10]In spite of all the other stances, Brexit was still their main platform, and it's because of this that its success was political suicide, with UKIP plummeting from the mainstream due to not having Euroscepticism to rely on anymore, and their other stances making them too radical for Conservatives, but not radicalfascist enough for BNPers.

They are more-or-less completely scientifically illiterate, as demonstrated by an interview published in The Guardian, in which Christopher Monckton, their science spokesman at the time (and former deputy leader), proposed that they would cut funding for climate science unless, as they see it, sufficient evidence should arise to change their mind on anthropogenic global warming, which he claims "large sums now squandered on addressing." In the same interview Monckton went on to say that health risks associated with excessive salt consumption are merely "unjustifiable fears" in regards to just one example. When asked on stem cell research, Monckton compared it to "the killing of very small children."[11]

UKIP rejects the recent House of Commons report on homeopathy as an unbalanced and short-sighted dismissal of a branch of medicine that last year treated 54,000 people on the NHS. UKIP endorses the remarks of the Chief Executive of the British Homeopathic Association who pointed out that "the [select committee] inquiry was too narrow in its remit, there is plenty of evidence to support homeopathy, with 100 randomised controlled trials, and many more on outcome measures, which reflect how patients say they feel." UKIP believes that homeopathy has much to offer patients and notes that in a recent survey carried out at England's NHS homeopathic hospitals, some 70 per cent of patients said they felt some improvement after undergoing treatment. UKIP will continue to support homeopathy through the NHS.

UKIP have responded to criticism of this policy by arguing that it is a 2010 statement, while the 2012 policy makes no mention of alternative medicine.[13][14]

In 2004, Kellie Maloney (then Frank Maloney), a UKIP candidate for London mayor said she would not campaign in the borough of Camden because it had "too many gays," that gay people don't do a lot for society and "there is a problem with gay parades."[17] Ironically she later came out as transgender.[18]

In the European Parliament, the UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom decided to call former UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire "a queer."[19]

In 2012, while campaigning in Soho (the hub of London's gay community), UKIP's press officer Gawain Towler tweeted a photo of a man setting light to a photograph of the openly gay candidate Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick.[20]

Winston McKenzie, UKIP candidate for Croydon North, saying gay adoption is "unhealthy,"[21] is a form of "child abuse"[22] and that children adopted by gay parents are "thrown away to the dogs."[23]

Another then-UKIP candidate — Julia Gasper — suggested that gay people should "stop complaining and start thanking straight people," because apparently gay people need to show a bit more gratitude for being born in the first place.[24] Dr Gasper also claimed on a private UKIP forum that gay people frequently engaged in sex with animals, and "[a]s for the links between homosexuality and paedophilia, there is so much evidence that even a full-length book could hardly do justice to the ­subject", a statement agreed to by UKIP member Jan Zolyniak.[25]

In the run up to the 2013 local elections, candidate John Sullivan was found to have published on Facebook a post claiming that "Victorian" physical exercise regimes in schools would prevent people from being gay (completely oblivious to the 'gym bunny' stereotype in gay culture) and praising the Russian government for banning Pride marches.[26]

In January 2014 Henley on Thames UKIP councillor and Fred Phelps wannabe David Silvester was suspended from the party after writing a letter to the local paper laying the blame for the winter 2013/2014 floods in the UK on the legalisation of gay marriage.[27]

In May 2014, Dave Small, UKIP's councillor for Redditch borough council, was discovered to have posted racist and homophobic comments on Facebook including the following: "Why on earth is this useless Government pandering to Puffs? I refuse to call them gays, as what has gay to do with Perverts like Elton John and Clair Balding who get their jollies in such disgusting ways. To sum up, they should not allowed to be married, they should go back to the closet." Small's Facebook posts also concluded that Muslim immigrants were responsible for the spread of tuberculosis and that Muslims in Birmingham were "jabbering in an alien voice".[28] Small was dropped by the party, but not before it was revealed that he used to edit 'Blues Zulu' magazine, a Birmingham City fanzine. In this capacity, he was arrested for inciting racial hatred following an article entitled "Fucking foreigners" which criticised various foreign-born football players and managers.[29]

In 2015, despite being the only major political party not to address LGBT issues within its manifesto (claiming the party is not "driven by the needs of differing special interests groups"),[30] the party has stated that it will not "un-marry" same-sex couples, despite opposing same-sex marriage in the first place. The party's mini-manifesto for Christians also supported a religious conscience clause, not dissimilar to the anti-LGBT "religious freedom" laws in the US.[31][32]

In 2015 it was reported that then UKIP leader Nigel Farage supported Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Polish priest who has been described as both homophobic and anti-Semitic (note the irony when you look in the next section) and who said of the election of the first openly gay Polish MP "the sodomites are coming; this is a very serious matter."[33]

Despite Farage's claim that UKIP is a "party of freethinkers," in January 2013, UKIP fired Olly Neville, leader of UKIP youth organisation ('Young Independence') after he stated that he supported gay marriage.[34][35] Richard Lowe, UKIP candidate for Chester, also had to resign after he supported gay marriage.[36] Homophobia also occasionally seeps from the UKIP official forums.[37][38]

Despite originally being allowed to participate in 2015 Pride in London, UKIP were banned from the celebrations due to safety concerns as many in the LGBT community rightly questioned why UKIP should be allowed to march, given their anti-gay views.[39] Despite this, a handful of LGBTQ* in UKIP members did get involved in the event.[40]

Perhaps to clean up their image following the parade of homophobic nutjobs (sorry "freethinkers") who have stood for election on the UKIP ticket, UKIP approved an 'LGBTQ* in UKIP' group, who thus far seem to have done very little other than grumble about how there aren't enough sane "socially liberal" people in UKIP[41] and has revelled in the Tory homophobia over the Sadiq Khan/Zac Goldsmith mayoral campaign in London, accusing him of being an "Islamist scumbag" and saying voting for Khan is "like cutting our own heads off"[42] – not a subtle reference to Daesh's beheadings at all.

The general attitude to foreigners and racial/ethnic minorities is summed up by this quote from Paul Wiffen, the now-former UKIP London chairman:[43]

You Left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to and our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us all under medieval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was the first to abolish.

Don't let UKIP critics fool you into thinking that the party is racist though. Consider this:[44][45][46]

Have you noticed that if you ­rearrange the letters in ‘illegal ­immigrants,’ and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-fucking raghead ******** with you.

Upon reading this, you might think that the man whose Facebook account this appeared on — that of Chris Pain, UKIP leader of Lincolnshire council — is a raving racist nutjob. But obviously it's because his Facebook got hacked.

Disgraced TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk was elected as a UKIP MEP in 2004 (he later left the party); his comments on anyone who isn't English are particularly telling.[47]

Of course, one must avoid jumping to conclusions. For instance, a former UKIP candidate for Somerset, Alex Wood, came under sharp fire in the press after he had been tagged on a photo in which many people thought he was giving a Nazi salute, but it later turned out that he had been (in context with other photos) "imitating a pot[ted] plant".[48] Police also confirmed that other racist comments ostensibly on his Facebook, which suggested that all Africans lived in mud huts, had not been posted by Wood and, in fact, never existed on his actual account in the first place, having been hoaxed through photoshop or a puppet account.[49] Suspicions currently lie on Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a notorious troll and sockpuppeteer who was more recently arrested for imitating Wood during a Twitter abuse scandal in April 2015.[50]The Mirror, which originated the accusations of racism, subsequently apologized for the error.[51] Wood has since left the party.

On the other hand, East Sussex candidate Anna-Marie Crampton faced a hailstorm of criticism in 2013 after posts were made on her Facebook citing a falsified book to defend the existence of the Illuminati and a Zionist conspiracy behind WWII, which she also claimed were made by Facebook hackers.[52] While there hasn't seemed to have been an investigation into the matter, perhaps a lesson in good password etiquette is in order.

In a May 2014 interview Farage claimed that he would feel "concerned" if Romanian people moved next door to him. When asked what the difference is between the Romanian people and his German national wife and children, he jokingly answered "you know the difference."[53] The day after the interview, he expanded on this assertion, discussing the high crime rate in the Romanian community.[54] He then double tracked on both of these assertions, claiming his mistake was due to tiredness.[55]

Ukip MEP Bill Etheridge is a fan of golliwogs, widely considered a racist caricature of black people.[56]

Other items for review: ceasing all free IVF treatment on the NHS; cutting unecessary waste e.g the destruction of drugs in care homes when residents move on to the next care home or the next world; the pregnancy abortion time limit; compulsory abortion when the foetus is detected as having Downs, Spina Bifida or similar syndrome which, if it is born, could render the child a burden on the state as well as on the family.

After the revelation of Clark's mandatory-abortions-for-disabled-foetuses plan, he was promptly dropped as UKIP candidate. Good to see that the party rigorously checks the quality and sanity of their candidates before they stand for election.

Nigel Farage, in an attempt to wash away the shit-my-dad-says-grumblesponge image of UKIP, claimed the 2010 manifesto was "drivel", citing that "he didn't read it".[58]. Ignoring both (A) the fact that Nigel Farage wrote the foreword to the UKIP 2010 Manifesto, as well as co-authored some of the policies[59] and (B) the more problematic issue of implying that he approved a list of policies to campaign on for both his party and as a man trying to become Prime Minister, without reading (or much caring for) exactly what it was he was campaigning for.

UKIP's European Parliament members are often moderately entertaining, when they bother to show up. Highlights include:

Nigel Farage referring to Belgium as a "non-country" and telling EU President Herman Van Rompuy that he has "a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states" and stated that Van Rompuy had "the charisma of a damp rag."[60]

UKIP won the largest share of the votes (27.5%) in the election, followed by the Labour (25.4%) and the Conservative party (23.9%). This increased the number of their MEPs to 24.[65] While the eurosceptic bloc is still a long way from power, it will unfortunately force people to take them a teensy bit more seriously.

UKIP won its first seat in the House of Commons when Clacton's incumbent MP, Douglas Carswell, defected from the Conservative Party (UK) and won 59.75 percent of the vote.[7]

UKIP then went on to win their second seat in the House of Commons when the incumbent MP for Rochester and Strood, Mark Reckless, also defected from the Conservative Party (UK) and won 42.1 percent of the vote.

Mark Reckless lost his seat to his conservative rival Kelly Tolhurst, leaving only Douglas Carswell in the Commons. However, the party increased its share of the vote to 3,881,129, a swing of +9.5% on 2010. Nigel Farage had repeatedly said that he would stand down from the leadership if he failed to win his South Thanet seat. He didn't win the seat and made a video saying he would stand down as leader, but later said that the UKIP Executive had not accepted his resignation and he would remain as leader. He also suggested that even if his leadership resignation had been allowed, he would have run for leadership again in the autumn of 2015. This caused an embarrassing internal spat for UKIP, after which most of Farage's opposition (of former aides) was quietly purged.

If the British media were to be believed, UKIP seemed to have a serious claim on taking the safe Labour seat of Oldham West and Royston at the by-election in December 2015. Reality then emerged and Labour won the seat with an increased majority. At first Farage blamed this on an "Asian bloc vote" and that too many constituents did not speak English. Later it was apparently due to crooked postal votes. A good loser is Nigel.[66][67]

UKIP naturally campaigned for the UK to leave the EU during the 2016 Brexit referendum, their biggest stunt being the sailing of a group of fishing vessels up the Thames,[68] and their most vile being the notorious "breaking point" poster.[69]

Nigel Farage quit the leadership after the 2016 Brexit referendum, and in September 2016 he was replaced by Diane James, a member of the European Parliament for South East England since 2014.[70] Before then, she had served as an Independent councillor and made a strong showing for Ukip in the 2013 Eastleigh by-election but came second to the Lib Dems. In 2015 she attracted some controversy for expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin's fierce nationalism.[71] She also defended Farage's possibly racist election posters, but in her favour she doesn't like the odious Welsh Ukip assembly member Neil Hamilton.[72] She failed to advance any policies during her leadership campaign[73] so it's hard to know exactly what she stands for other than nationalism and opposition to immigration. She has a degree in business and before entering politics she worked in private healthcare.[74]
James resigned from the role of leader of the party after a mere 18 days, which begs the question, why even bother?[75] No worries though, a new leader will be elected soon enough. Steven Woolfe, the party favourite, has thrown his hat into the ring and is sure to succeed James as leader - provided, of course, that he manages to get his forms in on time this time.[76] You'd think he wouldn't let anything stand in his way this time around. Right?

Paul Nuttall made himself a national laughing stock in February 2017 while running as a candidate in the byelection for the Stoke-on-Trent Central parliamentary seat. His claim on his website that he lost friends in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in 1989 were queried by his former school, who said he hadn't been there; and he stated (again on his website) to have been invited onto the board of a charity - he hadn't[77]. His Hillsborough comments caused two UKIP members in Merseyside to quit the party, citing his "crass insensitivity" - which is rather odd as UKIP have been all about crass insensitivity from the outset.[78]

Amongst the party's current critics is its original founder Alan Sked, who called it "morally dodgy" and accused it of focusing too much on opposing Islam and immigration rather than on other issues such as the economy.[79]

UKIP is also one of the only parties to receive substantial criticism on aesthetic grounds, largely as a result of its unfortunate decision to pick fuchsia as an official colour. Reading their garish, multicoloured campaign material[80] can cause temporary blindness. It is also questionable that UKIP is an anti-EU party, with seats in the EU Parliament. This becomes doubly bizarre when you consider the possibility of them causing mischief with their far-right friends in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

In 2010, Lord Pearson, then a UKIP leader, told voters in Somerset to avoid UKIP candidates and vote for Conservatives instead.[81] It's quite a feat when your own Lords are telling people not to vote for you...

In the run up to the elections in May 2014, UKIP released a leaflet which exploited D-Day war dead for their own political gain. This was in bad taste even by The Sun's standards.[82]

The BNP hate UKIP for stealing their anti-EU thunder and devoted considerable effort in UKIP's early days to messing them up. Fortunately, UKIP were sufficiently incompetent to do quite a good job all on their own. UKIP and BNP's stated policies are very similar,[83] the difference being that the BNP are Nazi chancers and UKIP are horribly sincere about everything.

UKIP attempts to distance themselves from other British extremists were somewhat undermined when their Thanet South branch followed in the footsteps of the EDL[84] and mistook Westminster Cathedral, no less, for a mosque.[85] "The people's army are not all wholly trained," responded Farage.[86]